Savage Hearts

I curse. “That’s ridiculous. Is it too late to cancel? You could come stay with me. I’ve got a little cabin at this hippie compound near the national park, where the company I’m working for houses their guides. It’s only a five-minute drive from The Seasons.”

“You’re working here?” she asks, glancing up at me, obviously surprised.

I smile. “I’m on staff at Extreme Canopy Zip Line Adventure Tours for the next week and a half. They needed someone to train their staff on cliff camping and I needed an alibi. Figured it was a good match.”

Sam shakes her head, but I can tell she’s impressed. “You’ve really thought this through.”

“I come from a long line of people who don’t mind operating outside the law,” I say, the conversation reminding me of my talk with my sister and the things she made me promise. “I wanted to go after them as soon as I found out what happened, but Caitlin warned me to wait at least a year, give them a chance to drop their guard and make sure I didn’t go off half-cocked. I had a few broken fingers at the time, too, so that wasn’t ideal for strangling people with my bare hands.”

Sam grabs a handful of my tee shirt, holding tight as she suddenly stops in the middle of the trail.

I turn to face her, every nerve in my body prickling with awareness. She isn’t even touching my skin, but this is the first time she’s instigated physical contact and my gut desperately wants to believe it means something, even if my head knows better.

“I would have done the same thing for you,” she says, light flickering behind her eyes, making me think maybe her heart hasn’t gone dark forever after all. “I’m not that person anymore, but I remember…”

She takes a breath and lets it out slowly.

By the time the exhalation is finished, her eyes are shuttered once more and her hand has dropped back to her side. “That’s why I knew I had to let you stay. And help. I would want the same if I was in your position. I can’t offer much, but I can offer that.”

I want to touch her so badly it’s hell to keep my hands to myself.

I want to cup her face in my hands and tell her I have no doubt that she would have gone to hell and back to protect me if she could, or avenge me if she couldn’t. I want to tell her that I wish it had been me. That I wish I could take everything she’s suffered into myself and spare her.

I would do it in a heartbeat.

I would do anything for her.

And that’s why I keep my arms at my sides and say, “Thank you,” but nothing more.

Right now, Sam can’t handle more. But maybe someday, when all of this is over…

She’s given me no reason to hope, but I can’t help it.

When you love someone the way I love her, hope refuses to die, no matter how many times it’s kicked to the dirt. Hope will keep me reaching out for Sam, again and again, for as long as I have hands because there are some dreams a person can’t give up on, no matter what.

Chapter Seven

Sam

“None are more hopelessly enslaved

than those who falsely believe they are free.”

-Goethe

* * *

Getting in touch with Carlos again is easier than I expected.

The first time, our meeting was arranged via texts between two burner phones. I don’t expect the number he gave me to work again, but only minutes after hitting send on a text asking about making another purchase—this time a sizable amount of cocaine—I get a reply.

I lean in to whisper to Danny across our table. “He says he can do a kilo for three thousand dollars.”

We’re at one of the many outdoor cafés near the city center. The wind is blowing and no one is seated close enough to overhear our conversation, but I’m more anxious about the drug deal than I was the gun. But then, the penalties for getting caught with that much cocaine are more severe than getting caught with an assault rifle. I’m going to be vulnerable until I unload the drugs on Scott.

It’s a risk, but hopefully, as long as I’m careful, I’ll be okay.

The more I think about it, the more the idea of Scott behind bars feels like the right thing. For a spineless toad like him, even a long weekend in a cage with real criminals will be enough to make him shit his pants several times over. After a year in a foreign jail, he’ll be scarred for life and determined never to do anything that might land him in lock up again.

“If you cancel your reservation for next week and stay with me, we’ll have enough with some left over,” Danny says, pulling me from my thoughts. “Or I could pay for it. It would just be a matter of figuring out how to withdraw the cash. I’ve been living with Caitlin and Gabe the past year so I could help out with the baby. I’ve saved a lot of money not paying rent.”